Vistani Initial Thoughts

[ThomasHunter]

I've made one of each (melee and thrower) using the Vistani tree. I have some quick thoughts (hope to reach the devs too) and hope to hear from all you much better players and builders than me!

Melee
I finally took my FvS out of moth balls and tried him out as a melee Vistani. Previously, he was a first life long sword build that was patterned after an old post on the forums. I took the dive into life #2 and found it to be quite fun. A quick note is that I had prepared a bit by making some of the daggers from the graveyard event. I must say that those were pretty good! I made 2xlevel 12 ones, a level 4 and a level 28 one. I also have an Epic Slice (no Dice yet). I decided to be even more brave than usual and am playing in Fury instead of my usual melee destiny of DC. I've done some darn good damage and with a 18/2 FvS/Monk build, I am really enjoying this character again. Shoot, last night I saw damage numbers I've only heard of from others! I took this as a good sign. Now to get the Strahd/Baba daggers...

Thrower
This build has been much more problematic. I seem to do hardly any real damage. I built a 12Bard/6Ranger/2Rogue mutt. Now, my best toon is a 15Bard/3Fighter/2Rogue so this seemed like a decent choice. I took up Swashbuckling and DWS for Called Shot (I think Umbongwa helped out with this a bit). Called shot would crit with a feww hundred damage which was nice and the cool down is pretty quick. However, mostly he was doing roughly 35 damage. Now another thing here is that Return to Sender is broke so there was no IPS. However, that would help with doing damage at one time, but not damage per throw. As I built him as a Scourge, once I finally reached 20 (a couple of days ago), I decided that I finally need some Coin Lord favor. Blah, it would take 2-3 shots to kill elite low level kobolds. Overall, this is underwhelming to me. Seems like the thrower side of Vistani needs some help. Also note that I am running Harper for KTA. It just seems like too many hoops to jump through with so little payoff.

I'm hoping that the dev team would consider buffing the thrower side of things if they hear from those who have tried this out.

Would love to hear what others have experienced with Vistani!

[Saekee]

for melee--I have used the tree on heavy assassin splashes and here are my basic takes:
1) the weapon style attack from stealth is as slow as handwraps from stealth (long pause) and should not be taken by stealth players and hence certainly not assassins. Just skip animation selection and still use tree
2) I personally detest the tier 5 short cooldown constant headache active stuff. Mathematically they are good but I can't play that way considering everything else going on
3) the tree is great for centered monk rogue splashes but unless you plan to go Tier 5 in it, that 12 AP cost for the centered with daggers pushes dagger useage way back in heroics. I have a 3 monk/16 rogue/1 fighter centered assassin that at level 17 is still using either wraps or shortswords (I use Razorend/Envenomed blade so not too shabby) since the 13 or so AP I would spend in vistani is not good enough for the cheaper shintao AP in deft strikes PRR etc. I think the real power of the tree is 1) the crazy moral doublestrike boostin rapid attack and 2) the tier 4 +20% offhand boost. I saw Tilomere post something on Fan of Knives so that must be good...

[Shadow_Jumper]

Melee
I finally took my FvS out of moth balls and tried him out as a melee Vistani. Previously, he was a first life long sword build that was patterned after an old post on the forums. I took the dive into life #2 and found it to be quite fun. A quick note is that I had prepared a bit by making some of the daggers from the graveyard event. I must say that those were pretty good! I made 2xlevel 12 ones, a level 4 and a level 28 one. I also have an Epic Slice (no Dice yet). I decided to be even more brave than usual and am playing in Fury instead of my usual melee destiny of DC. I've done some darn good damage and with a 18/2 FvS/Monk build, I am really enjoying this character again. Shoot, last night I saw damage numbers I've only heard of from others! I took this as a good sign. Now to get the Strahd/Baba daggers...

Would love to hear what others have experienced with Vistani!

My thoughts on VKF at cap:

I haven't had too much problems with the slow attack speed out of stealth. Its definitely there though so it needs to be taken into account. I find it generally more efficient to actually hit sneak to come out of sneak if you miss an assassinate instead of meleeing out as I used to. It takes getting used to, and can be somewhat frustrating, but its not a deal breaker for me.

The 5 tier is great for monk splashes and does offer more up front dps than the assassin tree. But if you want to be an absolute mob annihilator on high skull quests its not your best choice. Assassinate works on a kind off weird curve. Its not very useful in low to mid reaper, mainly because you can DPS stuff down fast and safely. But once you get into the high skull it is a huge boost to your mob suppression. Taking tier 5 VKF is honestly a huge hamstring in high skull reaper due to the loss of assassinate.

And oh. Pain and Suffering set is bomb AF. GL on getting it, and enjoy it when you do.

These are my at cap thoughts though. Customer mileage may vary.